A number of skate sharpening fixtures have been developed for skate sharpening machines. These fixtures hold the skate blade in place while a grinding wheel or the like is used to sharpen the skate blade. The orientation of the skate blade with respect to the grinding wheel is critical, and if the blade and wheel are not properly aligned, the blade will be sharpened in a not-square condition.
Prior art fixtures offer control of the blade orientation, see for example the Wissota and Blademaster fixtures, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,897,248 to Sacriska. In the Wissota “tangent finder” fixture, adjustments can be made to the height, in or out tilt, and side to side or degree of level tilt. The level of tilt is controlled by a knob wherein rotation of the knob alters the tilt of the lower blade support.
FIG. 1 shows a perspective view of an exemplary skate sharpening fixture, which is designated by the reference numeral 100. The fixture comprises an anvil base 101 which floats on a base plate 103, using springs, bolts and the like. Control knobs 105 are provided for adjusting the orientation of the anvil base 101 with respect to the base plate 103 for sharpening.
An anvil plate 107 is mounted to the anvil base 101 using block 109. The anvil plate 107 provides a surface 108 for one side of the skate blade body to rest when the skate edge is being sharpened and another surface 110. A clamp assembly 111 is also provided, which is also mounted to the anvil base 101. The clamp assembly includes a clamp 113, which is designed to be biased against the other side of the skate blade body during the sharpening operation.
The squareness of the skate blade can be checked by skate squaring devices such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,345,688 to Allen, which is incorporated in its entirety by reference herein. Since skate blades can have different shaped skate bodies, the squaring devices using the skate blade body cannot work precisely on all types of skate blades so that improved skate blade squaring devices are needed for these differently shaped skate blades.